I was invited to present a keynote, of sorts, at the Merging Media 2013 conference – a short and sweet two day conference featuring many great topics and good international speakers with a focus on the business/production side of multi platform but also the more usual esoteric aspects of transmedia and inherent community thinking. My talk was originally going to be a show and tell of all the new opportunities afforded to us by mobile, social & always-on networks, eye-candy with a chunk of futurist ‘my how the world is changing’ – but I decided to turn it more into a ‘what makes a compelling experience’ combined with ‘state of the industry (covered in my previous post)’ combined with a ‘process approach to creating service’, talk instead – with a little of the navigating the new landscape for good measure. So waaay too much in the time allotted, but at least this article has room to breathe 🙂

I hope I give a flavour of the talk below. I believe Merging Media will be making videos available too – which I won’t be able to watch as I rushed the latter part :(. The first part was actually partly scripted so that made it easier to copy some of that below the slides but there is much much more afterwards with lots of embedded media, I think there is a flow in the post. Obviously the slides only tell a quarter of the story and embedded after the break, but first…

Hello and thanks for inviting me to keynote here in wonderful Vancouver. Being one quarter French Canadian I do feel a little affinity with some of you, and have enjoyed a little time exploring & capturing the environment in the two days prior to this conference. But moving on let me apologise. I have struggled hard to find an innovative new theme, any new jewels of wisdom for you to ponder and apply to your own projects. So much in the transmedia arena has been talked about, theorised and postulated as the journey has only just begun. Perhaps the journey through the presentation itself may throw up some nuggets?. The media and storytelling environment in still in major transition and I and nobody else really knows where we are going, all I can do is prepare myself and others for this change. But first:

An Organic Multiplatform Transmedia Experience?

This is where I live at the moment and where, I believe, I had a compelling multiplatform experience. It was about two weeks ago. It involved personal life and death decisions, it involved loved ones, friends who lost everything, physical exertion, quests and games, feeling part of and working with a community, rich information, lots of information, the authorities, the law, anxiety, stress, stories of loss and heroism and making profound choices.

Always keen to see the latest, worthy research into those young wipper-snappers that apparently are our future so was lucky to be sent some insights today into Australian Youth, 4 million of them aged 16-30, from Urban Market Research (UMR) a joint initiative between Lifelounge and Sweeney Research.

There are the usual eye opening statistics, multi-tasking, mobile texting, overuse of social networks and so on (listed below) but the research is more interesting as it digs a little deeper and explores a few emergent behaviours, from years of doing all of the above.

NATURAL TRANSMEDIANS

The survey shows that multi platform storytelling, while slightly alien to those older folk indoctrinated with linear, mono media is an absolute natural space for this age group – they swim and immerse themselves in multi media and like the proverbial fish are unaware of the water they breathe and that surrounds them.

“While multitasking when consuming online and other media has been growing in recent years, it is now the norm. The research confirms life online is frantic, with over 80% of the youth market ‘doing other things’ while surfing the web and being active on social networks…it also reveals ‘interruptive’ marketing tactics are out, in favour of a more ‘discovery-led’ approach that allows young people to unearth new products, artists and fashion labels in their own time, and bank the street cred that comes with it.” – This group also cannot live without “An internet connection and mobile phone were rated the two top things UMR respondents couldn’t live without (30% and 20% respectively) over their car, TV, alcohol, favourite piece of clothing, drugs and favourite movies. Being connected is important.”

What does it mean to be real online? One of the biggest issues facing individuals and organisations in the new order that is social media (and web 2/3.0) is the problem of being human, appearing real, having personality and authenticity. Add to this the fact that we all ‘lie’ in real life and the issue of this manifesting online. The question of authenticity is at the core of social media and one that causes much disagreement between old school media/marketing types and those who are attempting to engage more ‘deeply’ online with communities and customers. Whether it is about the integrity of your blogging, the energy of your tweeting or how your overall package of Flickr, YouTube, Facebook etc: this post addresses some of the philosophy and asks practical questions which will hopefully get you thinking about the true value of authenticity.

1 noun – a new form, a means of collaborative communication through play in constructed shared ‘media-rich’ environments

2 verb – taking part in game-like activity across and within online and offline social networks and media portals.

Can we truly create meaningful immersive media ‘experiences’ for others? Ones that last, are memorable, have impact & emotion and keeps the ‘experience players’ coming back for more? I am currently building services, working on papers and delivering courses on Experience Design and this post is a quick summation of some of the background thinking and good case studies.

Filmmakers and marketeers are clearly moving into #TranSocialMedia Play in a big way with a triple whammy at the moment of Star Trek, Terminator & Lost (fan) ARG’s and a raft of social media campaigns across other film and TV properties (some much better than others!). I have written about worlds immersion and cross-media design many times in the past but this post looks at the addition of social play into the mix – a permanent fixture.